Innholdsfortegnelse for March 2024 i History Extra

“Sibling relationships can often be fraught, but when religious divides, succession disputes and capricious fathers are added to the mix, it’s no wonder when they fall apart. This was the backdrop to the young lives of Mary and Elizabeth, who would both come to rule England, but suffer a great deal of heartbreak along the way. In Nicola Tallis’s cover feature (page 20), she shows how their personal feuds shaped the course of Tudor England. Elizabeth went on to become one of England’s greatest queens, but did she spend her reign harbouring an astonishing secret? That’s the contention of people who believe in the tale of the Bisley Boy, whereby the young princess died in childhood and was replaced by a small boy of similar appearance who would masquerade as…

THE CONVERSATION “Indigenous children were forcibly separated from their families” Kavita Puri is a journalist and broadcaster for BBC Radio 4. Her new series about the Bengal famine, Three Million, will be available soon. See page 57 for more details I RECENTLY SAT DOWN TO WATCH THE LATEST incarnation of LM Montgomery’s classic novel Anne of Green Gables with my younger daughter. Reading the book and watching the 1980s television adaptation - starring Megan Follows as the 19th-century Canadian orphan Anne Shirley - had been such a rite of passage for me, and I wanted it to be the same for my own children. Having been so familiar with the original story, I was surprised to find that Netflix and CBC’s 2017 adaptation, Anne with an E, had taken on…

In October 1537, Elizabeth and Mary welcomed a new sibling when their stepmother Jane Seymour gave birth to the king’s long-awaited male heir. Prince Edward. Both sisters played key roles at the christening, with Elizabeth tasked with carrying the child’s christening robes and Mary made the baby’s godmother. Elizabeth and Mary doted on Edward, and during their father’s reign the trio could often be found in one another’s company. On one occasion Elizabeth gave her brother a shirt she had embroidered herself, and another time sent him her portrait. With just four years between them, Elizabeth and Edward were natural playmates, and they also had religion in common - a subject that would later be a bone of contention between Edward and Mary. This became apparent at Christmas 1550, when…

1 A Viking wedding involved a bed and eight people The people of medieval Iceland are best known for their sagas - vivid stories written about their Viking ancestors. Yet they also possessed a lawcode, and these laws reveal a curious marriage custom that shines a light on gender relations in Icelandic society. For a marriage to be legitimate, a groom had to be seen by six witnesses entering the same bed as his new wife, “without concealment”. The idea that marriage was witnessed ensured that children from the union were seen as legitimate - an important matter for the descent of property and for family honour. After all, the keeping of mistresses was far from uncommon and the sexual mistreatment of female slaves so widespread it appears that it…

Rebecca Frank: How different was the Victorian view of death to our modern conception of it? Judith Flanders: The main difference was that death was part of daily life. It wasn’t neatly tucked away in hospitals where you could go in and visit someone for an hour but didn’t see anyone die. Today, many people now go happily through their whole lives without ever seeing a dead person, which was simply not possible in the 19 th century. Hospitals were very limited in the kinds of diseases and illnesses they cared for, and they were a place of last resort for people who were too poor or desperate to be cared for at home. Infant death was vastly more common than it is today, though that was also simply due…

“Free Palestine from German guilt,” have rung the chants at many of Berlin’s demonstrations since the outbreak of the Israel-Gaza war. Meanwhile, chancellor Olaf Scholz insists that “Germany’s history and the responsibility arising from the Holocaust made it Germany’s perpetual duty to stand up for the existence and security of Israel.” The conflict in the Middle East has cut deep into the soul of a country that is still trying to come to terms with itself. Nearly eight decades have passed since the end of the Second World War, humanity’s most devastating military conflict. Under its guise, Nazi Germany murdered 6 million Jews, 3 million Soviet prisoners of war, 8 million non-Jewish civilians, nearly half a million Roma and Sinti, and hundreds of thousands of others it considered undesirable. Since…

The Edwardian era conjures images of country houses, tea on the lawn and long summer afternoons an era where refined ladies and gentlemen indulged in garden-party gossip and a spot of croquet. Cultural productions such as My Fair Lady, Mary Poppins and Downton Abbey have suggested something of a golden age: warmth and cosiness sandwiched between the momentous Victorian era and the great global slaughter of the First World War. The Edwardian era - named after the eldest son of Queen Victoria, the corpulent and lusty Edward VII - was a short one. In Britain there was less innovation than the previous century and things were arguably more stable too: the birth rate and death rate had fallen, so the population was older and households smaller. The era has also…

RECIPE Eighteenthcentury mushroom ketchup ELEANOR BARNETT shares her instructions for making a flavourful sauce with roots in south-east Asia The chances are that when you think of ketchup it’s a thick tomato sauce - a store-cupboard staple that goes particularly well with Friday night’s fish and chips or slathered on an American-style hamburger. As you might suspect, this type of ketchup is a relatively modern invention. Although tomatoes were first domesticated in what is now Mexico and transported to Europe following Spanish colonisation in the 1500s, they took a few hundred years to be fully incorporated into local cuisines. In fact, tomato ketchup wasn’t sold commercially until the mid-19th century, with the famous Heinz brand only launching in Pennsylvania in 1876. The original ‘ketchup’ actually hails from south-east Asia, where…

Planted squarely on a rocky crag in north-west Wales, Harlech Castle boasts an unrivalled strategic position. To the east rise the soaring peaks of Eryri (Snowdonia) National Park; to the west stretches the greyish expanse of Cardigan Bay. Many people are attracted to this scenic corner of Wales for the wide range of outdoor activities on offer in the surrounding area. Once here, though, the intimidating presence of the hulking medieval for tress demands discovery. The origins of Harlech Castle lie in the tumultuous final decade of the 13th century, when the independent Welsh kingdom of Gwynedd was overrun by the English armies of Edward I. This conqueror built Harlech as a formidable if sophisticated symbol of English royal power - a heavily defensive concentric structure designed to intimidate the…

1. Mute witnesses In our interview with Judith Flanders on Victorian death, I was interested to find out about the silent mourners known as mutes who would stand outside the homes of the deceased (page 70). 2. Bird feeders David Musgrove’s article on wheelbarrow racing highlighted some other unusual crazes, notably a 1901 Yorkshire competition where a group of men attempted to eat a pigeon every single day (page 31). 3. Elections and corrections I always learn new things from our Q&A pages, and this month I was intrigued by the story of Eugene V Debs, who ran for the US presidency in 1920, despite being behind bars (page 45).…

Christina, Queen of Sweden Gender iconoclast and pioneering intellectual NOMINATED BY GABRIELLE STOREY Christina, queen regnant of Sweden from 1632 until her abdication in 1654, was one of the most learned women of the 17th century. Her sexual identity and orientation have been the cause of much debate due to her cross dressing and self-declared disinterest in marriage, as well as her enthusiasm for activities such as hunting and swordplay, traditionally masculine hobbies. From Christina’s birth in December 1626, her gender identity sparked discussion, as she was mistaken for a son due to her swollen genitals and being born with a caul (the amniotic membrane covering a fetus). Perhaps hoping for a son, Christina’s father ensured that his daughter had an education fit for a prince, which may have impacted…

LETTERS LETTER OF THE MONTH Edward Abel Smith’s article on Nicholas Winton (Amazing Life, January) mentions that the Prague office of the British Committee for Refugees from Czechoslovakia was “led by a remarkable woman called Doreen Warriner”. But I wonder how many readers know just how remarkable she was. Aged 34 in 1938, she had a flourishing academic career and had just finished her first major book, The Economics of Peasant Farming, based on three years of research in eastern Europe. Ashamed of the Munich Agreement and impelled by a desperate wish to do something, she temporarily abandoned academia and flew to Prague. She soon realised that the people most immediately in danger were the Social Democrat leaders who had opposed Hitler’s plans for the Sudetenland. Enlisting the help of…

Convict candidate In 1920, a man named Eugene V Debs ran for the US presidencydespite the fact that he was in prison in Atlanta. Two years earlier, the socialist activist and fierce critic of America’s involvement in the First World War had urged men to avoid the military draft, which led to him being found guilty of sedition and sentenced to 10years in jail. When the 1920 election came around, Debs stood for office and ended up winning 3.4 per cent of the popular vote. Greek grease Athletes in ancient Greece had the sweat and oil removed from their bodies after exercising. Gathered by slaves employing a type of scraper called a stlengis, the mixture, known as gloios, was sometimes placed in bottles or jars and sold for medicinal purposes.…

One of the problems with biography, if an author is not careful, is that it can quickly become hagiography. Although Michael Meyer attempts to steer clear of this, A Dirty Filthy Book can’t help but fall under the sway of its subject, the pioneering birth control activist and social reformer, Annie Besant (1847-1933). An established icon in birth control history, Besant is long overdue wider public recognition. Focusing on her trial (alongside the radical politician Charles Bradlaugh) for the publication of Fruits of Philosophy - a sex education guide for the masses - Meyer interweaves Besant’s multifaceted life into an engaging prose, full of intriguing details. It is, in many ways, a love letter to Bradlaugh and Besant’s relationship, which directly shaped the society we have today through its impact…

Beyond the battlefield Outside of war, what made the Aztecs tick? Caroline Dodds Pennock previously appeared on the HistoryExtra podcast in 2020 to answer listeners’questions and popular internet search queries about the Mesoamerican civilisation. In conversation with Ellie Cawthorne, Dodds Pennock covered topics as diverse as architecture, religion and the Aztecs’deadly contact with the Spanish. historyextra.com/aztecseverything-pod The end is nigh? The Maya have often been wrongly credited with predicting the world would come to a fiery end in 2012, sparking disaster movies and frenzied internet discourse at the turn of the 21st century. But did they really claim to know the year of the apocalypse? Rob Attar put this question, and many others, to Matthew Restall in this fascinating episode dedicated to the Maya, from 2021. The wide-ranging discussion covered…

David Musgrove “Wheelbarrows do not drive many people crazy, but they grabbed the headlines in 1886. It’s one of the odder stories I’ve researched but it’s one that shines a light on the media’s role in whipping up a public frenzy.” David investigates the wheelbarrow craze that swept 1880s Britain on page 30 Judith Flanders “Being a historian of daily life is fun. But life involves death, and turning away was not going to make the subject disappear. So it was time death found its place in my research, right beside life.” Judith discusses her new book on death in Victorian Britain on page 68 Islam Issa “A unique city whose origins stem from the power of vision, Alexandria has always been an important part of me. Its millennia-long tale…

“From Africa to the Indian subcontinent, imperialism has left a trail of damage” Michael Wood is professor of public history at the University of Manchester. He has presented numerous BBC series. His latest book is In the Footsteps of Du Fu (Simon & Schuster, 2023). You’ll find him on X at MichaelWoodMV OVER THE PAST FOUR MONTHS I HAVE WATCHED the Israel-Gaza war with horror. And I have been struck by the growing international reaction to it all: the stark division between the Western world and the rising ‘Global South’, which increasingly no longer accepts the ‘rulesbased order’ that it sees as being imposed by the West to support its hegemony. It feels like a big moment in history. Is a new world order emerging? It has left me reflecting…

Sawdust Jack and James Gordon are not names that have gone down in the annals of sporting history. Yet in 1886, they were at the centre of an athletic endurance contest that briefly held the eyes of the British nation. It was mid-November, and John Martin, better known as Sawdust Jack, was whipping up a storm in Newcastle. He was trying to make his way through the city, but he was blocked by an enthusiastic crowd of supporters, lustily cheering him on, at every turn. He was a slim-built man, dressed as a labourer, but with an oversized and battered high silk hat, upon which was affixed an advertisement for a Newcastle hairdresser. The key item of his equipment was being pushed, rather than worn: after all, this was the…

The Seventh Seal (director: Ingmar Bergman, 1957) This film contains one of the most famous images in cinema history - a knight playing chess with Death on a stony beach. It is the starting point for a journey in which the knight (played by Max von Sydow) travels through a Sweden ravaged by the Black Death, encountering on the way a group of actors, a witch about to be burned, a jealous blacksmith and a renegade priest. Bergman uses the story to present questions of faith, meaning and religious doubt, while his cinematographer creates arresting images that stay in the mind forever. The Lion in Winter (Anthony Harvey, 1968) At Christmas 1183, King Henry II and his family gather to quarrel over the succession to the throne. Since about half…

Your new novel was inspired by the real story of Mary Anning (right). What was it about Anning that you found compelling? I’m intrigued by people who don’t fit the norm. Mary Anning, as well as being one of the greatest ‘fossilists’, has been referred to as ‘peculiar’ and ‘mannish’. She was from a family that knew tragedy, and she had to be nothing less than extraordinary to make a mark in the newly emerging science of geology - which she did. Were there traits of Anning’s that you used to develop the lead character of the novel, Ada Winters? Ada is precocious, curious and determined, shunned at times by her local community as well as by the scientific world to which she longs to belong - all traits inspired…

Subhadra Das’s first book catches two particular waves in current publishing. Firstly, it explains a large and complex issue through a number of objects, ideas or themes. Secondly, it addresses the politically contentious topic of decolonisation, through a coruscating critique of western civilisation. Das describes herself as a historian, writer, broadcaster and stand-up comedian (her wit suffuses this book). A British citizen born in Abu Dhabi to Indian parents, she is a former curator of science collections at University College London. She has also worked as a researcher into critical eugenics - the discredited 19th-century theory of ‘racial improvement’ and selective ‘breeding’ of peoples. This personal and academic background makes her uniquely qualified to call out the ‘lies’ that underpin the west. The book’s 10 chapters each take a central…

This year marks the bicentenary of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI). Why are you such a keen supporter of the charity? Some of my earliest memories are sitting in my father’s boat in Bosham, West Sussex. You become conscious, I think, if you sail at all, that the sea is a capricious thing. I’ve not been out in a lot of major storms, but I’ve been out in force eight, force nine. It is bizarre how strong and powerful the effect of the sea and wind can be for anybody, especially in a small boat. How did the RNLI qet started? It was established before the sort of government action we would expect today. It was started by people who were independently motivated and supported by donations from interested…

IN PROFILE Phryne, born Mnesarete in the city of Thespiae, was an ancient Greek courtesan famed for her beauty who became one of the wealthiest women in Greece. She is perhaps best known for offering to rebuild the walls of Thebes after their destruction by Alexander the Great, and for being the rumoured inspiration for Praxiteles’ celebrated sculpture of Aphrodite “As a woman living in a highly patriarchal society, Phryne had few options open to her: she had to use her beauty and wits to survive” When did you first hear about Phryne? While I was a student at the University of Cambridge. The more I learned about her over the years, the more fascinated I became by her story. She was the ‘It girl’ of her day, and obviously…